The Future Is Here: A Robot Assembled an IKEA Chair (Without Losing It)

IKEA has a way of inciting meltdowns—whether you're shopping with your significant other at one of the brand's warehouses or assembling a Billy bookcase, it's safe to assume there will be tears and/or cursing involved. Interested in exploring the true "limits of robotic manipulation," engineers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore put two robots up to a task that routinely stumps humans: assembling a Stefan IKEA chair. As Wired reports, the scientists used two industrial robot arms with force sensors and a 3-D camera to complete the project in just 20 minutes. "What the robot does is to first figure out where exactly is the original position of the frame," said engineer Quang-Cuong Pham in the resulting report, "and then calculates the motion of the two arms automatically to go and grasp it and transport it." Watch two robots do the impossible below.